Installing GNU parallel utility on Ubuntu 14.04

I am trying to install GNU parallel utility on my local ubuntu 14.04. I downloaded the tar file from .

The version is parallel-20140622.tar.bz2.

This got downloaded into my Downloads folder and then I opened a terminal and then changed my directory to Downloads and then used

tar -xjf parallel-20140622.tar.bz2 ; cd parallel-20140622; ./configure ; make;make install

But it gives me this error:

varun@varun-OptiPlex-760:~/Downloads/parallel-20140622$ make
make all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622'
Making all in src
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622/src'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622/src'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622'
varun@varun-OptiPlex-760:~/Downloads/parallel-20140622$ make install
Making install in src
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622/src'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622/src' /bin/mkdir -p '/usr/local/bin' /usr/bin/install -c parallel sem sql niceload '/usr/local/bin'
/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file ‘/usr/local/bin/parallel’: Permission denied
/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file ‘/usr/local/bin/sem’: Permission denied
/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file ‘/usr/local/bin/sql’: Permission denied
/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file ‘/usr/local/bin/niceload’: Permission denied
make[2]: *** [install-binSCRIPTS] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622/src'
make[1]: *** [install-am] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/varun/Downloads/parallel-20140622/src'
make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1

How to fix this?

2 Answers

You should be able to install it using apt-get. Per "Where do I get a package for GNU Parallel?":

sudo apt-get install parallel

In your specific case, though, you'll want to run sudo make install instead of just make install. Alternatively, you'll need to specify a new root directory to your configure script.

./configure && make && sudo make install